Getting 8 Hours of Sleep Might Actually Be Bad for You

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We're all too aware of how important it is to get a good night's rest, so we're always interested in finding ways to help us achieve this better: keeping electronics in another room, shutting off the computer an hour before bed, exercising at a certain time of day, etc. But now, the one fact that we've always held onto, that eight is the most magical number when it comes to optimal hours of shut eye, we hear is a lie.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a series of studies have found that not only is seven the number of hours we want to strive for, but also that getting eight hours or more could actually be unhealthy. We knew oversleeping wasn't a good thing, but we didn't realize quite how unhealthy getting overzealous with our Z's actually is.

In one particular study, Dr. Daniel F. Kripke at the University of California San Diego found that participants whose sleep ranged from 6.5 hours to 7.4 hours had lower mortality rates than those with shorter or longer sleeps. In a later study, Dr. Kripke even found evidence that we need less sleep as we get older: After testing 450 elderly women, he found that those who slept fewer than five hours and more than 6.5 hours had higher mortality rates.

Higher mortality rates are scary enough, but there are plenty of other worrying side effects of oversleeping, including diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, cognitive function and memory issues (which are common results of too little sleep) did not change with too much sleep, but if those other serious risks aren't enough to scare you into setting your alarm, we're not sure what will.